Monday, June 13, 2016

2016 Bayshore Marathon Update

Hi All! I've got the Bayshore numbers for you.

Doesn't that looks like a pretty course?

I looked into this race when I was trying to find something after Boston with a favorable course before. It was sold out by the time I looked at it (which was late - like a couple days after Boston). I have a feeling it sells out relatively quickly. This time luck was on my side because the East Coast was hot the weekend of this race - that would have been a bummer for me to fly across the country only have have a race day where it was 70-80 degrees. I suppose after two of the warmest years on record in Southern California, I finally got lucky with Mountains 2 Beach.

I think, though, that this will still be on my list of races I'd like to run - the elevation is starts at 608 ft, lowest point 582 ft, highest point 627 ft with lots of little undulations. Which is perfect, in my opinion. Not totally pancake flat so your legs get a little variation (at Houston, I swear I welcomed the overpass hill at mile 13 because my legs were actually feeling crampy from so much flat). And this race is cheap! $97? That's a bargain.

Anyway, onto the numbers.

2015 vs 2016:

AG Group

2015 Qualifiers

2015 AG Total

Percentage

2016 Qualifiers

2016 AG Total

Percentage

F18-34

54

420

12.86%

40

383

10.44%

F35-39

30

187

16.04%

24

185

12.97%

F40-44

22

151

14.57%

18

134

13.43%

F45-49

24

89

26.97%

11

87

12.64%

F50-54

11

63

17.46%

6

68

8.82%

F55-59

7

33

21.21%

5

37

13.51%

F60-64

9

17

52.94%

3

12

25.00%

F65-69

2

3

66.67%

0

5

0.00%

F70-74

0

0

0.00%

0

0

0.00%

F75-79

0

0

0.00%

0

0

0.00%

F80+

0

0

0.00%

0

0

0.00%

M18-34

44

285

15.44%

22

327

6.73%

M35-39

24

178

13.48%

12

170

7.06%

M40-44

23

191

12.04%

8

168

4.76%

M45-49

24

128

18.75%

20

162

12.35%

M50-54

27

135

20.00%

16

129

12.40%

M55-59

17

79

21.52%

6

73

8.22%

M60-64

14

35

40.00%

7

46

15.22%

M65-69

8

22

36.36%

5

18

27.78%

M70-74

1

3

33.33%

0

1

0.00%

M75-79

0

0

0.00%

0

2

0.00%

M80+

0

0

0.00%

0

0

0.00%

Totals

341

2019

16.89%

203

2007

10.11%

Big drop in qualification (-40.47%). Finishers are about the same, but the number of qualifiers is way down.

It follows that we can expect a drop in the cutoff, the question is how much?

Totals for all top feeder races up to this point:

AG Group

2016 Qualifiers

20156 AG Total

Percentage

2017 Qualifiers

2017 AG Total

Percentage

F18-34

4782

38863

12.30%

4079

37456

10.89%

F35-39

2190

15478

14.15%

1998

15457

12.93%

F40-44

2196

14807

14.83%

1886

14322

13.17%

F45-49

2223

10739

20.70%

1979

11083

17.86%

F50-54

1370

7018

19.52%

1316

7416

17.75%

F55-59

721

3547

20.33%

632

3560

17.75%

F60-64

324

1465

22.12%

331

1568

21.11%

F65-69

93

456

20.39%

107

505

21.19%

F70-74

21

131

16.03%

19

152

12.50%

F75-79

3

26

11.54%

1

21

4.76%

F80+

1

4

25.00%

4

10

40.00%

M18-34

4255

34549

12.32%

3461

32723

10.58%

M35-39

2153

18273

11.78%

1807

17622

10.25%

M40-44

2433

19909

12.22%

2058

18771

10.96%

M45-49

2969

16821

17.65%

2501

16821

14.87%

M50-54

2277

13244

17.19%

1922

13243

14.51%

M55-59

1498

8045

18.62%

1342

8379

16.02%

M60-64

900

4267

21.09%

880

4417

19.92%

M65-69

399

1784

22.37%

384

1887

20.35%

M70-74

122

601

20.30%

97

592

16.39%

M75-79

25

159

15.72%

30

175

17.14%

M80+

5

36

13.89%

9

40

22.50%

Totals

30960

210222

14.73%

26843

206220

13.02%

So we see a decrease of 11.62% in the BQ rate year over year. Decrease in the total number of qualifiers is 13.3%.

Margin breakdown:

Margin

2016

Percentage

2017

Percentage

<1 minute

1696

5.48%

1510

5.63%

1-2 minutes

1686

5.45%

1520

5.66%

2-3 minutes

1702

5.50%

1428

5.32%

3-4 minutes

1548

5.00%

1333

4.97%

4-5 minutes

1463

4.73%

1237

4.61%

5-10 minutes

6523

21.07%

5742

21.39%

10-20 minutes

8748

28.26%

7508

20> minutes

7594

24.53%

6565

24.46%

Totals

30960

26843

Squeaker Pack holding steady year over year, 26.15% versus slightly higher this year at 26.18%.

Looking at the feeder races up to this point in the 2016 qualification year, the number of runners that achieved a margin of 2:28 or better were 26,750.

We have 26,843 total qualifiers for the 2017 qualification year, so that translates to some kind of cutoff.

Sorting the qualifiers, descending from maximum margin to minimum margin of qualification, the 26,750th has a margin of...

4 seconds

Again, we are in this weird near-zero territory. This year is going to be interesting being in the squeaker pack. There is obviously going to be variation as far as who decides to register. We have more qualifiers than slots but not everyone decides to go to Boston every year. It could be higher than 4 seconds if a higher percentage of folks decide to register, it could be lower if fewer decide to register. I'm feeling relatively confident with 2:37 (though you know I'll still be sweating those 9 days where we have to wait) but there is still this unknown, human choice factor of the "to run or not to run" that we can't totally quantify.

Ottawa Marathon will be next - same weekend as Bayshore and also hot, so I'm expecting to see a similar trend of fewer qualifiers.

6 comments:

You make a great point regarding the unknown variables which influence how many BQers decide to register in a given year. When I qualified this year (with a 2:20 margin), a fellow runner I had just met congratulated me. I was beyond thrilled to have finally reached my goal, but I expressed to this other runner how much I hoped it would be enough to earn a bib for 2017. She expressed that she believed 2016 was something of an anomaly -- that more BQers registered because it was the 120th running.That said, I still worry 2:20 won't be a large enough margin. I understand the London marathon had decent weather this year -- also a large feeder race.In any case, thanks again for all your work on this project. You have given me hope.

Just ran Grandma's last week - didn't need to bq as I had done so at NOLA by 6:20, but there were a lot of tears as the weather reared it's ugly head once again - High temps, sunshine, and high humidity made it a black flag race.

Yeah, I heard it was not a good day there. I loaded up the results for Ottawa, and there is a drop in BQ numbers there as well. I still have to compile the totals hopefully this weekend, then I'll get around the Grandma's. It's already close to 0, Ottawa is goign to push it down further. Thankfully Grandma's uses a provider that is similar to a couple other races so I'm hoping the formats are the same which will make it faster for me to download and parse it all.